sample files not all in the distribution

[Pierre Labastie <pierre labastie neuf fr>]

Hi,

I am new to this list. I am one of the "editors" of the BLFS
(http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/) book. It is a book
of "build recipes" for linux packages.

Usually, when a new version of package is released, we build
it, and we run the tests to check that we have not missed
something important. Lately, I have updated the "gnumeric
page" (versions 1.12.19 and 1.12.20) , and noticed that a lot
of tests were skipped: the reason is that not all the
sample files used for the tests are in the released tarball.

I cloned the git repository, and there are the missing sample
files. It looks like the reason why not all the files are included
is the code in Makefile.am:
--------
dist-hook:
        mkdir $(distdir)/samples
        cp $(srcdir)/samples/*.gnumeric $(distdir)/samples/.
        mkdir $(distdir)/samples/excel
        cp $(srcdir)/samples/excel/*.xls $(distdir)/samples/excel/.
-------
So my question is: is there a specific reason for not including
those sample files, at least those needed by the tests?

Regards
Pierre